Trout Opener 2019

Every year for a while now my dad and have fished some small wild trout stream on CT's opening day, somewhere nobody else is fishing, somewhere the stocking trucks probably haven't been. It's a nice little tradition. One year we got on a ridiculous sucker bite. Another year Dad got the biggest brookie I'd ever seen out of the particular stream we were fishing. Last year I got a bunch of small brookies out of an exceptionally small stream. This year it was the conditions that would stand out.

It had rained almost all night and well into the morning. The creeks were up and off-color. We had breakfast and made our way to the stream and found it carrying more than a little bit of leaf litter. Well, we were there to fish, so we did.

After poking some pockets in the main stem of the creek I decided that we ought to make our way up to a tributary that would likely be more fishable. We did. And it was, though just barely. I switched from a San Juan worm to a little purple streamer, and in the third pool I fished I had a fish on that came unbuttoned. Okay, this might work. a few runs up I had another take and this time sealed the deal.

Unfortunately the next four takers were not so easily landed, and that was kind of the trend for me: lots of takes a brief hookups, lots of fish dropped. But eventually I brought another to hand, which I chose not to photograph. My trend was preferable to my fathers though. For him, it was lots of things hooked and lots of flies lost. We all have those days....

My third and finale fish of the day was a gorgeous male.I had hooked him on the way up, but sure enough he was in the same spot and willing to come back. For this minute little tributary of an already small stream, this fish was a stud.

We briefly visited another stream, and it's tributary as well. But nothing was doing there except frogs, which was fine by me. 

The king looks over his domain

All told, that was a nice little Saturday morning. The opening day tradition continues.

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